Month: February 2020

Growing up in a family can lead to tensions as well as affections; facing the question of what to do in life, what to believe; humour, sadness, frustration, joy … everything is there in “The Photo Album”.

Countries slide into fascism step by step. That was the situation in Germany in the 1920’s and dearly 1930’s. Some far-sighted journalists such as Kurt Lenz tried their best to warn of the future. Of course they paid a bitter price. Read “As Though Everything Depended on Me”.

“The Photo Album” contains no actual photos, but it has a novel technique to get readers to visualise the characters and events.

What fate awaited Pacific islanders in the period of European colonisation. Not a happy one. Read about it in “Fatal Empires”.

Was Mary Magdalene an ex-whore? No, she was branded as such by men jealous of her intimate friendship with Jesus. Read about it in “Reluctant Messiah”.

Judas’s name is a synonym for treachery. But that is a travesty of what really happened. Read about it in “Reluctant Messiah”.

A case can be made for saying that journalists are among the most important members of any community — we depend so much on them to know what is going on. Read the story of a brave interwar German journalist whose motto was “as though everything depends on me” in the novel of that name

In “The Photo Album” the focus shifts gradually from life in a forest to that in a village, then to a city, a capital, and finally to the big world beyond Australia. Despite their scattered interests and political and religious differences a family solidarity continues.